


A Heart Without Words

by absurdiist (workthewentz)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Religion, but i left that open ended, felt a bit blasphemous to write smut into a religious fic, no smut sorry guys, there's some allusion to the tony bucky situation in civil war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 02:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7873522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/workthewentz/pseuds/absurdiist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve made a vow long ago. He promised that if God would overlook this, let him have this kiss, he'd do everything else right. And he would've broken that vow if it was up to him, but now his soul is gone, he's given that away, so he's doing right for Bucky's.</p><p>Or, where Bucky comes back after the helicarriers and Christian Steve really wants the love of his life to make it into heaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Heart Without Words

**Author's Note:**

> I've read a lot about Bucky making promises and sacrifices for Steve, but not nearly enough about Steve doing the same for Bucky. This wasn't premeditated, but it's been sitting in my Google Drive without a purpose for a bit and after a trip to church with a blatantly homophobic pastor I had to come home and project. So sorry if it seems jumpy. I feel like it needs more, but I'm attached to it as is. I might continue it.
> 
> Title taken from this quote by Gandhi (who I'm suddenly finding out is not that great?): “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

Bucky returns a couple months after the helicarriers - and HYDRA - fall, shows up at Avengers tower. He just walks in, surrendering himself to Tony’s security team.

“Sir, you want to see this,” JARVIS' voice materializes. “Sergeant Barnes seems to be here to see you.” 

Steve freezes. 

“S-Sergeant Barnes?”

“I believe that you know him as Bucky.” When Steve doesn't answer, he tries again. “The Winter Soldier?”

“He's not the Winter Soldier,” Steve bites reflexively, feeling his body tense. “Sorry. But, if he's here, he's not here as the Winter Soldier.”

JARVIS catches on. “Undercover, possibly, sir? Infiltration?”

“I don't think the Soldier did espionage,” Steve murmurs, shuddering as he recalls what he'd read in the files, the sparse and undetailed information that SHIELD had on the Soldier’s activities. Bucky had been made to do a lot more than act as a sniper. He'd assassinated a lot of people, from foreign diplomats considered a risk to HYDRA’s own scientists who knew too much and threatened to tell the world. But it was always up-front and efficient. Black ops was more Nat’s speciality. 

“Okay, let me see.” JARVIS, nothing if not convenient, uses the tablet sitting on the counter to conjure up a holographic screen. Steve will never get used to this kind of technology.

He walks over warily, refusing to believe that it's actually Bucky who's visiting him. But there he is, being pat down by security guards. When they ask for identification, Bucky just smirks. “I don't have any. Technically I'm dead. Not supposed to exist.” The guards just get flustered, because even though they've dealt with a nearly-300-pound Asgardian god and his insane narcissistic brother, they've no precedent for a ninety-year-old, dead-but-not-dead, assassin-but-not-assassin-slash-soldier standing in the lobby asking for Captain Rogers. 

“Should I go down or…” he asks JARVIS, before remembering that the artificial intelligence is just that - artificial, and while JARVIS may understand the rush of emotions Steve’s going through right now, he can't empathize, and so he can't tell Steve what to do.

“I can let him upstairs to your floor, sir.”

“That’d be great, JARVIS, thanks.”

 

“Nice place you got here,” is the first thing Bucky says when he steps off the elevator into Steve’s living room. “Just can't get away from the Stark name, huh?” Steve just kind of gapes at him as he takes in his surroundings. He's wearing a burgundy hoodie and dark jeans, and a black baseball cap. His hair, barely longer than it was on the helicarrier, reaches toward his shoulders but doesn't quite brush them. He looks like anyone else Steve would see on the streets of DC, doesn't look deadly or haunted like he did the day he disappeared. 

“Where you been, Buck?” Steve asks quietly. 

“I, uh, had to take care of some things. I went to the Smithsonian.” Steve nods, recalling how many times he's had to go to that exhibit to fill in gaps for himself after he came out of the ice. Bucky sounds desperate, and Steve decides not to rush him. “I don't remember everything, but-” 

JARVIS cuts Bucky off. “Sorry for the interruption, gentlemen, but I felt the need to inform you that Mr. Stark is coming down.” Bucky doesn't jump, but instead shuts down, retreating into himself and casting shifty eyes around the room. He doesn't seem surprised by JARVIS’ presence, though, which makes Steve wonder exactly how much Bucky knows. Three months is a long time when you have Internet access, and with SHIELD’s leaked files all over the place-

“Well isn't this a happy reunion? JARVIS, don't you think we need a cake for this?” 

“I don't know if a cake is appropriate, sir-”

“It was a joke, JARVIS. Loosen up.” Tony strolls in, decked out in one of his casual suits with the tie undone and sunglasses. He sees Steve eyeing his attire. “Date with Pepper,” he waves off and turns to Bucky. “More importantly, how are you, Sarg? I've heard a lot about you.” Tony’s voice holds a joking tone, but his scowl and furrowed brow behind the glasses contradicts it. Steve chalks it up to worry. There is, after all, a dangerous ex-assassin in his building.

“You're Howard’s son,” Bucky says. It isn't a question, but Tony nods, his brow becoming even more furrowed. “Unfortunately. Was always more of a mama’s boy.” Tony smooths out his suit, throwing a glance towards the clock above Steve’s mantle. He knows they're friends, but Bucky can't stop the stab of jealousy that comes when he notes that Tony knows exactly where the clock is. It's small, but speaks volumes. Steve decorated this room himself with an eye for vintage; this isn't exactly the kind of furniture that a playboy billionaire would choose.  _ Quit being unreasonable, Barnes. Steve is allowed to have friends that aren't you. Especially after seventy years. _

They stand in awkward silence for a few seconds, before Tony says he has to go. “Well, Barnes, since you haven't tried to kill the Capsicle yet-” 

Bucky immediately frowns. 

“I would never hurt Steve.”

Tony waves Bucky’s statement off like it's not important to his point. “I guess you're welcome to stay. Fury is gonna come come looking when he hears, but we're not required to report to SHIELD for a week, so  you should be in the clear.” He turns to leave, shooting one last glance at Bucky, but behind the glasses, Steve can't decipher his expression.

 

Once he's safely in the elevator, Tony leans tiredly against the railing. “JARVIS?” He calls.

“Yes, sir.”

“I need you to comb through those leaked SHIELD files for anything having to do with my parents’ deaths.”

“I'll have it pulled up on your laptop when you return.”

 

“He's…” Bucky trails off, trying to find the right phrase to describe Tony. He settles on ‘a lot’ but realizes that'll probably offend Steve.

“A lot?” Steve offers, and despite himself Bucky breaks into a grin. Now that they're alone again - or, as alone as they can be with that blasted machine person thing watching them - Bucky feels safer. Steve exudes that, an aura of security and sureness, even when he's as unsure as he is right now around Bucky.

Bucky starts to pull off his jacket, realizing halfway through that the man whose house he's just walked into uninvited may not actually want him here. So he stands in the living room, jacket in hand, until Steve stops looking at his shoes and starts looking at him. Steve gestures for Bucky to follow him into the kitchen. The decor is out of place, the modern touch and sharp edges contrasting against the soft, old feel of the rest of the space. “Are you hungry? I made pasta yesterday, so there are leftovers.”

“Pasta sounds great. Got any water?”

“In this heat? Yeah.” Steve reaches into a cabinet and tosses Bucky a bottle of water which he chugs half of in one go. He realizes Steve’s been watching him, and he almost blushes, but stops the heat from rising to his cheeks.  _ Bucky Barnes doesn't blush. _

“So, what have you been doing?” Bucky asks, setting down the bottle as Steve places a container into the microwave. 

Steve bites back the  _ Looking for you _ that threatens to spill over his lips, settling instead for, “Resting. Dismantling an entire agency takes a lot out of a guy.” When Bucky doesn't say anything, Steve continues, testing the waters. “Almost drowning does that too, but thanks to you I’m still standing.” At that, he garners a reaction. 

Bucky barks out a short laugh, more like a huff, in Steve’s direction. “I'm the reason you were in that river in the first place.” And he braces himself for the response.

“That wasn't your fault. That was HYDRA’s. What's your fault is that you broke through and pulled me out and I'm alive.” Steve looks directly into Bucky’s eyes as if challenging him to argue, and then sighs when he doesn't.

“Well it's also my fault that I didn't come here sooner.” 

A smirk plays on Steve’s lips. “That too.”

The microwave dings and he pulls Bucky’s food out, sticks a fork in it, and slides it across the counter. Then he catches the glint of metal as Bucky shovels pasta into his mouth. He notices Steve’s eyes following his hand and frowns self-consciously. Of all things for Steve to find off, it had to be the one thing he couldn't change. 

“Can I… Can I see it?” Steve asks tentatively, not sure if he's allowed to.  Bucky just lifts one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug, then unzips and removes his hoodie, revealing his cybernetic arm, the entry point concealed by his tank top. Steve rounds the counter and sits in the chair beside Bucky’s, leaning into him and reaching out with both hands. His fingers ghost over Bucky’s forearm, and he glances at Bucky’s face. He’s looking down at Steve, blue-gray eyes piercing, but other than that he looks content enough to have Steve touching him. So Steve continues, trying to be gentle but still wanting to know everything. He eyes Bucky’s elbow and shoulder, trying to figure out how the plates fit together, how Bucky’s able to control it.

“You were never interested in machines before.” Buck’s still looking at him with that stare, the one that makes him blush and feel as though he needs to apologize.

“I am when it’s a part of you,” comes automatically out of his mouth before he can stop it, too genuine and too open, and he can't break their eye contact. 

So he laughs. “Remember that night, at the science expo?” 

And Bucky had forgotten a lot from his past, but that night? “You mean how you abandoned your date to go enlist for the seventh time?”  _ How I was stupid enough to let you? How I missed you the second I walked away? _

“Hey, at least it worked that time!”  _ If it hadn't, you'd be dead right now. Or still with HYDRA.  _ Steve couldn't decide which was worse. 

Bucky scoffs, but there’s laughter in his eyes. Steve hasn't seen that look in - well, seventy years, he guesses, but in his timeline, he supposes it’s been less than three. It feels so wrong - knowing that they should've both grown old by now, living out their days as retired vets, but now they both have regrets and have lived much too long, gotten too many second chances.

Steve doesn't even realize that he’s crying until Bucky looks over at him again and immediately jumps to his rescue, wrapping his flesh arm around Steve’s broad shoulders and pulling him in close. It triggers something in the back of Bucky’s mind, a memory of holding the man next to him just like this, except not like this - he was much, much smaller. Sickeningly skinny and pale. Smiling. But more than the memory itself - which was more of a flash than anything else - Bucky registers the feeling behind it, the overwhelming desire to protect and shelter. The same thing he'd felt when he dove into the water to stop the man - who he'd been fighting just seconds before - from drowning. He shudders, trying to come back into the present. “Steve, are you okay? What’s wrong?” 

Steve shakes his head. “I just haven't seen you in so long, Buck. That's all.” 

“Oh, is that all?” Bucky smirks, pulling back just enough to press his lips to Steve’s forehead. He wraps both his arms around his best friend -  _ Okay _ , he thinks.  _ Best friend, that's a new one.  _ A little daunting, considering he has so many new things about Steve to learn. But it feels right, and Bucky’s always been a heart-over-head kind of person. 

 

It takes a while - a few weeks that feel more like months to Steve - and quite a few trips to the therapist SHIELD insists on as a condition to let Bucky walk free, before Bucky opens up enough to explain exactly what HYDRA did to him, what they made him do. But Steve can't blame him. Bucky’s just come to terms with it himself, regaining his memories of seventy years of torture and assassinations, then all that came before, so he knows it must be hard explaining it to someone else. The war, Steve, his family. Steve finds himself praying often for Bucky’s salvation, something he hadn't done since the midst of the war, and he feels guilty for ignoring his faith as long as he has. Bucky doesn't know, or pretends that he doesn't. In the face of all Steve’s attempts to convert him, even sitting through countless episodes of Sunday mass before he was old enough to claim he had to work rather than go to church, he's still an atheist. And after everything, Steve would be surprised if Bucky could  _ look _ at a Bible without cringing, so he keeps that part of his life reserved for when Bucky’s out, sparring with Nat or catching up on pop culture with Clint and Sam. But he wills it to happen, wills that with all his heart, Bucky will get to heaven somehow. On a bad day, when Steve can't get all the assassinations, all the state-sanctioned war killings off his mind, he garners his soul for Bucky’s. He's had enough love in this lifetime, from his ma and his friends and even strangers. He can't give Bucky all he deserves, but he prays that if God will give that to the love of his life somewhere else, a place without Steve, then he'll take it. He’ll take it because Bucky’s been dealt the wrong cards and Steve would give the whole deck for Bucky to come out of everything safe and alive and loved.

 

Eventually, they fall back into old habits. Steve’s not sure who kissed who first, but it was a combination of hesitancy and desperate, raw,  _ want _ . And Steve’s been awake for some time now, so he's seen the parades and the arguments in Congress over human rights. He knows about the Westboro Baptist Church and the laws in other countries that deem people like him unfit to love, unfit to even live. And he doesn't think his love is  _wrong_ , per se. But he doesn't care. Steve made a vow long ago. Back in the forties when his love wasn't illegal, but you sure didn't know that when the slightest inkling that you liked the same sex waged you a fist in your face - or a knife in your throat, depending on who you were dealing with. He promised that if God would overlook this, let him have this kiss, he'd do everything else right. And he would've broken that vow if it was up to him, but now his soul is gone, he's given that away, so he's doing right for Bucky’s. 

He pushes away when Bucky’s hand snakes down into his khakis. (They've had a lot of arguments about those. “God, Steve, fucking  _ khakis _ ? I hate these so much.”) 

“No, no, stop,” he breathes, though everything in him is screaming  _ don't stop. Don't stop, take me with you and take me into you and just leave me there.  _ But he pushes away anyway, moving to the other end of the couch.

Bucky has the ability to look hurt and concerned all at once. “Do you...want me to go? I don't understand-”

Steve shakes his head wildly, still fighting against his body that wants to move back into his boyfriend’s. He barks out a laugh, but it sounds feral. “I want that, trust me. But I can't.”

Bucky’s dark eyebrows furrow into a line over his head. Steve almost cuddles back into him, hating that expression, wanting it to go away, but remembers. Bucky’s soul.

“You can't? I-”

“Abstinence,” he laughs, and it's real now. He sounds like he did when he was fucking twenty-one and trying to save himself for marriage. There was no  _ marrying _ Bucky then. But here, in New York in the twenty-first century, Steve resolves that he will when they're both ready. When he's sure Buck’s mind is free from torture, they will. But that's not now.

The couch wobbles with Bucky’s laughter as well. “Fucking  _ abstinence _ ? Steve, we’re a hundred years old. We can barely die. I think that any diseases either of us may have had were wiped clean.”

Now Steve’s full-on chortling, the mood gone. “No, I'm not talking about STDs, Buck,” he says between laughs. 

“Then what, you punk?”

And suddenly Steve sobers. He can't tell Bucky the truth. That'd end in an argument and probably a trip to the confessional for Steve. But he can't lie. So he settles on half-truth.

“Jerk. I just want you to be sure you wanna stay before you go feeling me up like one of your dames.” He utters the words with intended humor, but Bucky’s face falls into a scowl.

“You know I’m never leaving you, punk. Not until you want me to.”

_ Well that's not happening. _ “Shut up and kiss me, Barnes.”

 

Steve notices.

It's probably subconscious on Bucky’s end, but Steve still notices. The way he angles himself away, never touches anyone with his left hand if he can help it. Always positions himself on Steve’s left, so if their arms do brush Bucky ends up with skin on skin and not skin on sickeningly cold metal.

And Steve may notice, but he's not going to give Bucky’s demons the satisfaction of asking about it. Of arguing over it. So he settles for showing extra love to the cybernetic arm, whether that’s kissing the entry point, the scarred tissue where flesh meets cold, or simply holding that hand rather than Bucky’s flesh one.

One particular night it's a movie. Steve makes Bucky sit first, and he deliberately squeezes in between Bucky’s left arm and the end of the couch. Bucky squirms uncomfortably, but otherwise doesn't say anything, and instead lays his head in Steve’s lap, letting the metal arm hang onto the floor. Steve, unsatisfied, reaches across and takes the metal hand into his flesh one, raising it to his mouth and skimming his lips across the cold knuckles-that-aren't-knuckles, eyes glued to the TV the whole time because Flyboys is actually pretty entertaining dammit. Too many straight people and a bit historically inaccurate, maybe, but interesting all the same. Bucky sighs. 

“You love me so…” He searches for the word, and settles on “Unnecessarily.”

“James Buchanan Barnes, I love you like God,” Steve says simply, and at that moment, Bucky could swear he'd fallen in love with Steve Rogers, all over again, for about the sixteenth time since he’d been back. “Unconditionally. I just can't absolve you of anything.”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, remembering at once all the Sunday school lessons and the bible verses Steve used to repeat, the rosary that used to hang around his mother’s neck, and he's definitely  _ not _ about to cry. “I have to work on that one by myself.”


End file.
